


Remediation

by psocoptera



Series: Games and Puzzles [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Blindfolds, Bondage, Boot Worship, Caning, F/M, Naked Male Clothed Female, Nipple Clamps, Non-Sexual Kink, Pining, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:33:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ward, and May, from the end of episode four through the beginning of episode nine.</p><p>In which fantasies are fantasized, options are considered, boots are polished, control is lost, and trauma is forgotten, at least for a little while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: a character is at one point led to feel during a non-pre-negotiated, no-safe-word kink scene that they have no options and no control. Nothing happens that they feel should not have happened, but people who like their consent explicit and enthusiastic may not care for the scene's focus on the character's helplessness. Also, I'm not entirely sure about non-sexual kink; a dick is touched, but it's soft, and no orgasms are had? But there is a dick? Also there is sexual kink earlier in the story? Tags are hard. (Unlike the dick.)

When Grant woke up, and saw the curve of May's naked shoulder, a mad cascade of images started to -

_No._ Ward caught himself. _Back up, then forward in order._ For now, at least, in this, he was in control.

***

After May's little refresher class in seduction, after she had left him, kneeling and throbbing, Ward had walked to his bunk (the awkward walk of a man with a tent in his pants, trying to move normally), shut the door, yanked down his pants, and jacked himself frantically. Possibilities spun through his mind. There were any number of areas where he could use a remedial lesson. Like yoga, his last yoga class was even longer ago than his seduction training. His form was probably terrible. He pictured May adjusting him, chastely at first, pulling him straighter, deeper into the bends, then more and more intimately, nudging him not just with her hands but with her knees, her thighs, arching him back into camel pose, folding him forward into a wide-legged bend, her hands on his hips, her hips flush against him, the bulge in her pants pressing into the cleft of his -

But when his breathing had slowed, and he'd cleaned himself up, he'd set the fantasy aside with a sigh. The real Agent May, if she thought his yoga needed work, would probably leave a yoga DVD in his bunk, or send him the URL to an instructional website or something. Something... efficient.

_But she had taken the time to play seduction target_ , he argued with himself. _And gotten something out of it._

He dimmed his light and let his head thump down into his pillow. She had initiated the seduction scene. If she wanted more, she would ask him. Going to her on some pretext, asking for her "help", would be an imposition. And besides, he didn't want his relationship with her, if he was going to have one, to be based on his failings. He wanted to deserve her. He wanted to _serve her_ , genuinely, not his own libido...

He fell asleep asking himself what, if anything, he could give Melinda May.

***

It was easy, the next day, to fill out a mental timetable of how Agent May spent her day. Closed together in the 88 feet of the Bus interior, he could essentially tail her without leaving his seat. She spent the bulk of her time in the cockpit, not actually flying the plane, as he'd assumed at first, but on the radio, arranging for refueling and resupply wherever Coulson is directing them. Ward was embarrassed to realize he'd never questioned the water from the plane's tap, the emptying of the lavatories, the stocking of the cupboards. Even when she assigned the shopping to local agents, she still had to keep track of what they needed. And sometimes, he discovered through a few casual questions, it was much more complicated, scraping together enough fuel in remote and impoverished regions, finding someone they could trust to touch the plane when she had maintenance concerns.

It sounded pretty tedious to Ward, but he got the impression that May liked the quiet administrative puzzle of it, like a never-ending game. For Ward, the appeal of resource management boardgames was _winning_ , cutting things that little bit more finely than an opponent to edge them out, but for May he thought it was just the satisfaction of keeping it all running invisibly, like the smooth flight of the plane itself, unquestioned until something shook it up.

He still resolved to start picking up a few things when he was off the plane, if he passed an appropriate store - a case of energy bars, a pack of toilet paper - just to show that someone else was paying attention. Not to try to impress May - he almost made himself laugh out loud, imagining himself laying toilet paper at her feet like some sort of tribute - but just to elevate his household-role in his own eyes from "useless sponge" to "vaguely contributing roommate". (He had to admit, he'd always taken resupply for granted, but if it was worthy of _May's_ time...) 

He thought, at first, that he might have something to offer to her workout regime. Her tai chi was clearly off-limits, but she also did many of the same things he did, calisthenics, stretches, heavy bag. Sometimes if they were on the ground but Coulson didn't want them going far afield, they would just run in circles around the plane; 10 laps was a bit over a mile, just clearing the nose and tail and wingtips. It occurred to him that next time they landed he could offer to race. Then he decided that sounded hopelessly childish.

They had a basic weight bench down in the cargo hold and he did, casually, ask if she'd like him to spot, so she could lift closer to her max.

She shook her head. "I don't lift heavy if I might see action soon," she answered. She didn't sigh, but Ward thought she looked a little wistfully at the bench. "Which is always. So, no."

Then she shot him a look, dark and mocking, that said "I know exactly what you're doing, young man." But not, exactly, "cut it out". Ward felt naked and embarrassed and turned on, torn between trying to flirt and laughing it off, and by the time he decided to act innocent, she was halfway back up the stairs.

***

If May's routine was not ripe with erotic potential, Ward's imagination certainly was. Interrogation games... sparring... evasion, escape... May driving him to be _better_. He pictured her, pushing him down to his knees, snapping handcuffs around his wrists behind him, telling him he could come if he opened them fast enough. Distracting him with her crotch in his face, grinding her pubis on his chin. His fingers slippery on his lock pick, smelling her wet and aroused even through her clothes - 

He came, alone in his bunk, wishing he wasn't.

***

He felt ridiculously betrayed when, while goofing around with Skye, he overheard May making a pass at Coulson. It was deniable enough, an offer of friendly sparring, but Ward had thought enough about that tone in her voice, that glint in her eye, that _very same scenario_ , to be sure.

He was also sure she'd never intended him to overhear. She was brusque, but not carelessly cruel, he thought. He shouldn't have heard her, really, but some trick of the plane's acoustics, his ingrained espionage training - oh, who was he kidding. If she was anywhere around, she had his attention.

Of course he'd tried _not_ to let on to her that he was getting hung up on her. Maybe it was hitting May, like it was hitting him, that their new assignment had almost no overlap of "off duty" and "off the plane"; maybe she was starting to explore all her options for... recreation. Maybe he'd let his imagination fix on her too fast. But the scientists were an impenetrable duality, Skye was his trainee, and she was _Agent May_...

It occurred to him that it was May who had suggested he take on Skye as her S.O. What if she had volunteered herself? Would he be fantasizing about Skye, now, instead? He thought about Skye's body, so much softer than May's, her easy laugh, the way she'd taunted him to "say it" when she sunk his battleship.

He could picture her playing the Domme, he thought. It would be a naughty game, to her. She'd make him call her "Mistress Skye", swat his ass a few times, maybe tie a necktie over his eyes and be on top when they fucked. _Cosmo_ magazine stuff, with orgasms all around and kisses and cuddles afterwards. It would be sweet, and fun, and simple, and now that he thought about it, not unappealing. She was interested, he thought. Maybe if Skye really became an agent, she'd report directly to Coulson like the rest of them, and he could consider it for real, with her, and if May wanted Coulson, she should of course have whatever she wanted…

He smiled at Skye, and thought that there was plenty of room in 88 feet for a multitude of possibilities.

***

And then Skye betrayed them, had been lying to them all along, and Ward couldn't believe he had thought about kissing her.

May poured him a drink and he sipped it morosely, wondering what Coulson was saying to Skye, if she would stay on the plane after this, or if they would dump her in Hong Kong too, no resources, no way home...

Ward, with only his body, had any number of options. He could roll a drunk for their wallet. He could mug someone. He could turn a trick. With a bit of unpleasant work, he could activate his subcutaneous SHIELD transmitter and wait for pickup.

He couldn't picture Skye doing any of that. He hadn't taught her, yet, to do any of that. Without her phone, unable to touch a computer - 

Even if Coulson let her stay on the plane, she would be declawed in one of those bracelets. Defanged. There was nothing else to do, if you had to keep a snake around. But, oh, it made her so much smaller than he had started to think she could be.

He threw back the rest of his drink and then realized that, out of drink, he had no idea what to do with himself next.

He looked up at May and realized she was watching him.

She cocked her head slightly and gave him a look up and down.

His breath caught.

"Your boots need polishing," she said flatly.

It wasn't at all what he'd thought she might say, for a moment there, had pictured her making him the same offer she had made Coulson, to pull out the mats. He looked at her blankly.

She waited.

He looked down at his boots. They were, in fact, dirty and scuffed.

He nodded his agreement.

She raised her eyebrows expectantly. And, okay, he got it. Go keep yourself busy, Agent Ward, moping time is over for the day. One drink is acceptable. Two would be wallowing.

He made his way back to his bunk and unlaced his boots. Took the brush and cloth and polish out of the drawer and sat down to start cleaning his boots.

It was familiar and meditative and he could feel himself relaxing into the mindlessness of it as he worked. May was absolutely right. He worked the polish in little circles, and thought he might go all the way and spit-shine them once he finished.

And then May opened the door to his bunk.

She stepped in, and closed the door behind her.

Ward froze mid-polish.

"Good work on that one," she said, nodding at his left boot, finished and drying on the floor. "I thought I might have you do mine while you were at it."

Without grabbing on to anything, or otherwise making any concession to being standing on a moving airplane, she lifted one foot and rested it lightly, heel-down on his thigh.

Ward blinked, for just a moment, watching her standing there on one foot, relaxed and balanced. Then he looked down at the foot in his lap and knocked his right boot heedlessly to the floor, out of the way.

Her boots were the same black leather as his, with a silver buckle and a solid chunky heel. As he pressed the cloth to the top of the boot, he could feel her foot inside.

He didn't dare to think. Small circles on the toe, the outside edge, the instep.

Focused on polishing, he wrapped his hand around her ankle to lift her foot to get better access to the heel, and realized belatedly he could have thrown her off balance. But he hadn't, of course.

He wondered if he raised her foot further, to his shoulder, to _her_ shoulder, if she would wobble, at all, if at some point she would lift her arms for balance, or have to clutch his hair for support.

He dared a quick look upwards. She was watching him, unfathomable.

He redoubled his efforts on her boot, setting her foot back into his lap to work above her ankle. The leg of her tight pants tucked in to the top, and he worked with precision around the rim of the cuff, careful to not get the slightest smudge of polish onto the fabric.

When he was done, she lifted her foot and turned her leg side to side to inspect it.

"Nice," she said, and set it down.

This time, when she put the other foot in his lap, she put her toe down right over his zipper, and let it rest more heavily.

Ward set the cloth to the toe of the boot. He wanted to close his eyes and just stay there like that, feeling the pressure of her foot, and his erection pushing back against her, but he also didn't want to keep her waiting.

So he polished, meticulous circles, up and down the boot. This time, when he needed to work on the heel, she leaned forward into a shallow lunge. His head was bent over her boot and her head bent over his. He thought he could feel her breath on the back of his neck.

When he finished with the heel she pushed herself, with a jolt to his dick, back upright for him to do the cuff. It was pressure enough to be painful, and he wanted her to do it again and again.

She didn't, just waited for him to finish, then gave the boot the same inspection as before, and set her foot down.

He looked up at her, aware that his pupils were probably blown, that he'd been breathing hard since she switched feet. She seemed even less moved than last time. No beads of sweat, no flush.

But there was something in her eyes, Ward thought, something in how she looked at him. Could he be imagining it? That she looked almost - hungry?

He looked down at her feet.

He could get down on the floor and lick her boots. The polish on the first one would be dry by now. He could press his lips to the toe and only the layers of leather and sock would separate his lips from her skin.

And he was going to do it, _was really doing it_ , slid silently off the edge of his bed down to the floor - 

\- and was intercepted by his abandoned right boot, kicked into his hands with a neat sweep of her toe.

"Goodnight, Agent Ward," she said, and was through the door and gone before he'd done anything but grasp helplessly at his own boot.

***

After that he really didn't know what to think. She'd been grinding her toe into his genitals. It must have been obvious that he was aroused. But she'd shut him down before he could do anything else. So, she didn't want anything, besides that contact through her boot. No skin touching skin? Was she stone? Was she ace? Was she a _virgin_?

Maybe she just wasn't that into him, he reminded himself sourly. Sure, a few people here and there were stone, or ace, or virgins, but not-interested was the default condition of the human race, and it was awfully arrogant to start pinning labels on her sexuality just because she didn't want to go to bed with him. He'd done the one-on-one with Agent Romanov, the exercise where she pointed out all his biggest emotional and sexual levers, so that he knew what kinds of manipulation he had to be most careful of, and egocentricity had been on the list somewhere after his family issues, his fear of intellectual inferiority, his susceptibility for mommy figures, and his paradoxical desire to be penetrated, but not by a male phallus.

_God_. Agent May had access to his file. Did she think he saw her as a mommy? She did do their grocery shopping. Daddy Coulson, Mommy May, and their four bickering kids - he shuddered. No. He'd sucked her dick, he was pretty sure she knew he didn't regard her in a maternal light.

Maybe she was fluid-bonded to Coulson. Maybe she was just doing what seemed most practical at the time, to break him out of his little sad-spiral over Skye, an emotional reboot via a prominent button.

Skye's voice, in his head, said "you could just ask her". He thought she would have loved playing confidant, that despite her interest in him herself, she would have been just as happy to squeal and gossip and egg him on. "Just go up to her and say 'I would like to give you an orgasm, are you interested'", he imagined her telling him. "Stop being Ward and just be Grant, go tell the girl you like you like her!".

But it wasn't that easy. The most important thing was to be professional. They were all on this plane, and might be working together for a long time. If he was having emotions over Agent May, that was his problem, not hers.

***

He dived out of an airplane and caught Simmons. He went on a mission with Fitz. He thought he could have either of them, or both, together, if he was reading things right.

It would be the smartest choice, in some ways. He could burn off some energy. Get his mind off the unattainable.

But it would also draw a circle with Skye on the outside, and they were - not friends again, not exactly, but allies. Rebuilding something.

She was flirting again, and sometimes he even felt himself wanting to respond. But then he would catch the gleam of the bracelet around her wrist, and he just couldn't. Even if she were trustworthy, the bracelet marked her as Coulson's personal problem, Coulson's personal project, Coulson's personal _property_ , as much as a collar might, in some circles. It just felt wrong, to him, to think about touching her.

In his bunk, he still thought about Agent May, sometimes. He thought about Angelina Jolie, too, and Mila Kunis (and Deputy Director Hill, and Agent Romanov, because it had not exactly escaped his attention that SHIELD was full of gorgeous Amazons, and Romanov had told him herself that it was often a better idea to keep things in-house than to get mixed up with civilians). Of course, he didn't think about ways he could try to get Agent Romanov to laugh, or buy a small bottle of almond oil in case she ever had sore muscles after a mission and needed a massage.

But mostly, he kept himself to harmless fantasies, fucking, sucking, being fucked, being sucked, things which, he told himself sternly, there was no question of ever really happening, so there was no possible getting mixed up between fantasy and reality, like he had after their little seduction game.

***

And then he went Berserker.


	2. Chapter 2

Ward wasn't sure exactly what May was offering. But it was unmistakably an offer.

He wasn't sure what he _wanted_ her to be offering. Silent drinking? A listening ear? Advice?

_Liar_ , he called himself. He knew none of those were what he wanted.

He wanted a hole. He wanted a hand on his throat. He wanted to drown out the voices he couldn't stop hearing.

He walked down the hall and shut her door behind him.

***

With her boots off and sleeves rolled up, May looked bizarrely casual. Ward wondered if she felt as exhausted as he did. The strength was long gone, but the hate was still churning inside of him, making his stomach sour and tight. He hadn't eaten, couldn't imagine sleeping.

May silently flicked the cardboard tops off two glasses and poured them each a drink. She pushed Ward's towards him and then held on to it, contemplating him.

Ward reached for it, but May didn't let go. Ward froze an instant before his hand would have covered hers. His hand hovered awkwardly in front of the glass. He raised his eyebrows at her.

"Let's give you a real break," she said. She tapped her index finger against the glass. "This isn't an off switch," she said. "You might feel better, you might feel worse. It can't make you stop thinking about it."

"You got something better?"

He meant it rhetorically, a little bitterly. But May surprised him. She set down his drink and stepped around the table, right up to him, close enough that he could have bent his head down to her hair, if he had dared to move. She put her hand on his shoulder.

It was a completely innocent touch, impersonal. Anyone on the Bus could have done it, clapping him on the shoulder, grabbing him to point something out. In many places he'd been, although certainly not all of them, he could have tapped a total stranger on the shoulder and thought nothing of it.

The weight of May's hand resting on him felt totally different. It felt significant.

She was close enough to kiss, but she wasn't turning her face up to him or anything. Just looking at him, evenly.

Slowly, so slowly, Ward started to raise his hand to her hair.

He didn't connect. His hand was still somewhere between them when she took the smallest possible step back. Just a fraction of an inch, but enough that he hesitated.

In his pause, she gave his shoulder a gentle push down.

He was dropping to his knees almost before he realized what he was doing. It brought him even closer to her, their positions now reversed. He thought he might be looking up at her with the big eyes and parted lips he'd been looking for on her, a moment ago, the kiss-me-now look.

She didn't. But she moved her hand from his shoulder to his chin, and set her thumb against his lips.

"I know you want to be good for me," she said, and oh, god, he did, he wanted to be _so good_ for her, "But tonight, you let me worry about that."

He frowned, confused.

"Don't try to get it right," she said, lowering her voice. "You're going to react how I make you."

Ward gulped and nodded, his lips brushing against her thumb.

"Okay," May said, still in that slow, low voice. "Let's have you narrate." She took her hand away from his face.

"Uh, sorry?" He was confused again.

"You tell me what I'm doing, and why."

He blinked. She waited.

"Um... you're waiting." She raised her eyebrows minutely. "Oh, you're, you're having me narrate." She nodded. "Because - uh." Reasons raced through his head in a muddle. To humiliate him, but he didn't want to say that, but she'd told him to tell her, but she'd told him he didn't have to be good. So maybe he didn't have to. Maybe she just liked the sound of his voice. Maybe -

"You think about that," she said. "Or don't." There was just the hint of a smile in her voice.

She started walking around him, considering. He wasn't sure if he should keep her eyes forward, or twist to face her. "Don't try to get it right" was a really vexing instruction. "Oh," he said belatedly, "You're walking around me. Trying to decide what to do?"

She was squarely behind him now, and he resisted the temptation to turn around and see her expression. His hands were hanging loosely against his thighs, and he wondered if he should put them behind his back or behind his neck or something.

All at once, he felt her drop down behind him. Her hands snaked forward around his waist and quickly unbuckled his belt. She drew it out through his belt loops, then stood up again behind him.

He braced himself for an impact, wondered if she'd loop it, or just use the free end.

Instead, he heard a clunk as she set it down.

"Tell me," she reminded him.

"You took my belt off," he answered, a little embarrassed that he kept forgetting. "I thought you were going to hit me with it, but you didn't."

He expected her to ask if he'd wanted her to, if he did that, but she didn't. Instead, he felt her hands on his right ankle, under the leg of his pants, investigating his holster and backup gun.

"You'll need to take my shoe off to get that off," he said, without thinking, and then slapped himself mentally for making assumptions again. But May just murmured, "Thanks."

She put a hand on his shoulder as she got to her feet again, and then grabbed a handful of his hair, hard, and started towing him over to the bed. He shuffled along on his knees, wincing and pleased, and remembered to narrate.

"You're sitting me on the edge of the bed," he said, as she did. "You're taking off my shoes and socks. You're taking my weapon. You're taking off my holster. You're taking the knife from my other ankle."

"Do you know why?"

"I'm not carrying anything else right now," he said, "So now I'm unarmed?" It came out as more of a guess than it should have, for something that was, in fact, true.

May didn't answer, but started working on the buttons of his shirt.

"You're unbuttoning my shirt," he said, as she did that. "You're removing my shirt. You're, um, hey." She had pinched his nipple, hard, as methodically as she had undone the buttons.

She pinched harder. It was like a vise. "You're pinching my nipple," he said in a rush, and she let go.

He looked down and watched the blood rush back into his nipple and resisted the urge to rub it. It was like the reality of the situation was rushing back in with his blood. That had been _Melinda May's hand_ on his nipple, on his chest. She'd taken his shirt off. She'd pulled his hair. She was maybe just getting started, was going to do who-knew-what to him.

_Because she was helping him_ , he thought sourly. Not because she was actually interested, but because of his weakness, because she thought he needed this. And the worst part was, he did, he wanted it too much right now to turn her down.

He gasped as she tweaked his other nipple. "Hey," she said. She put her hand under his chin and drew him to his feet. Her hand wasn't tight, on his throat, but it was somehow inexorable.

She stepped back. "Strip," she said, and so Ward pulled down his pants and his briefs and stepped out of them. His shirt was on the floor, so he dropped his other clothes there too.

She looked at him, naked, and he looked at her, looking at him. He wasn't hard at all. He felt profoundly disappointed in his dick, making such a poor show of its chance to be naked in front of Melinda May, but honestly, after the Berserker rage, and reliving his worst memory, he couldn't really be surprised.

She poked him in the stomach.

"I'm naked!" he said. "I mean, um." She swept the heap of his clothes away with her foot. "You took my clothes?"

"That's right," she said, and he couldn't help it, it warmed him right down to his toes. Then she frowned. "You're very tall."

He dropped back down to his knees, and she gave him a little pat on the head, ruffling his hair. Then she stepped past him to the bed, and pulled the pillowcase briskly off of one of the pillows. She folded it a couple of times, and then wrapped it around his head, over his eyes.

"You're blindfolding me," he said. She'd rolled the bottom in such a way that it was thicker, and he could only see a sliver of light down past his nose. He felt her securing it behind his head, catching some of his hair in the knot.

He'd done plenty of blindfolded exercises in training. He listened as she stepped away, smelled alcohol as she came back and held a glass to his lips.

"Drink," she said, and so he took a swallow, and another, trying not to sputter or cough, letting it burn down his throat.

He realized after she took the glass away that his hands were still free, that he could have pushed the glass away from his mouth at any point. But he hadn't. A drop was trickling from his lips, down his chin. He wanted to wipe it away. He didn't.

"Hmm," she said, and he thought she was doing it deliberately, making a thinking noise now that he couldn't watch her face.

She grabbed him by the hair again and pulled him up and backwards, back onto the bed. This time she tipped him further until he was lying down, legs hanging over the side. He could feel the dip of the bed as she sat next to him.

She put her palm on his throat and pressed, lightly, then stroked it down his sternum, down his belly, all the way down to his dick.

It didn't even twitch.

"Sorry," he said miserably, thinking of a hundred useless erections he would have gladly traded for just one, right now. Was he ruining her plan, whatever it was?

She grabbed hard him by the chin. "I act, you react," she said firmly. She got up from the bed, and rustled around. He heard the zip of something opening and closing - her bag? He tried to think what she might be fetching. Not much point in condoms, at the moment. He listened to her walk around the room. He thought he heard the sliding of hangers on the closet rod. He heard a dragging sound, like she was moving a chair, and then some thumping and swishing that sounded like she was doing something with the curtains.

He couldn't imagine what she was doing. Faking him out, maybe, doing lots of random things to disguise one real one?

She came back and sat down on the bed again.

"You're an unreliable narrator," she said, wrapping fabric over his mouth, "Let's try something else." She lifted his head, passed the fabric under, and tied a knot by the corner of his jaw. He was pretty sure by the feel that it was the other pillowcase. It wasn't much of a gag, but the meaning was unmistakeable, and Ward felt a mixture of shame, that he'd been so bad at what she'd asked him to do, and relief, that he didn't have to think about what to say any more.

May lifted one of his hands and started rolling something tight and stretchy down over it. He took a quick sniff - definitely one of her socks. A thin band went around his wrist over the sock, which she pulled snug - cable tie, he thought. Another sock went on his other hand, and the second cable tie threaded through the first one, leaving his hands bound together on his chest.

"SHIELD trains you to never stop thinking," May said. "Right now you're deciding whether you could break those ties without unacceptable damage to your hands." Ward had been thinking exactly that.

"So how do you stop?" She stood up from the bed again. As she bent over in front of him, he felt her hair brush his naked thigh. Then his ankles were grabbed and lifted, and his knees bent up towards his chest.

He was suddenly very exposed, and then even more so, as she pressed his knees back towards his shoulders and shoved something ropy and furry under the small of his back. She let his hips fall back to the bed, and tied the whatever-it-was over the backs of his thighs. _Bathrobe belt_ , he thought. Then two more cable ties, around his ankles and interlocked.

It was an enormously vulnerable and suggestive position. He was really glad he wasn't still narrating.

He felt the bed dip and jiggle as May sat down next to him again. She leaned over him, and her hair tickled his face and neck.

"I took your gun and your clothes and your vision and your voice and your movement," she said quietly. "I bet you think I have your full attention now."

_Yes_ , he wanted to say, _absolutely, you have my utter undivided attention._

"But you're wrong," she said. "You're going to need to hold very still for this next bit."

He froze, and he felt her hand on his chin. Then he felt the probe of something thin and cold (a hairpin? a toothpick?) into his ear canal.

It poked into another foreign object, the communicator, that he had stopped noticing weeks ago, and withdrew.

"I'm deactivating your comm," May said, almost whispering, right into his ear, and Ward shuddered, all over, exhaling hard into the gag.

" _Now_ I have your full attention," she said, and licked slowly along the curve of his ear.

_What if we get a mission,_ Ward wanted to ask, _what if more Norse pagans show up, what if the scientists are in trouble._ But he couldn't.

"I took your responsibilities," May said, still in that low, husky voice. She inched closer to him, and he could feel her, warm, all along his side. Still clothed, he realized. As if it mattered.

Grant was no stranger to scenes and positions and quite a variety of play, but now he felt like a total novice again, like it was all new and overwhelming. He flushed as May ran her hands along his ribs, and got chills as she stroked up the backs of his thighs. He lost his orientation, briefly, with respect to the room, and felt like he was floating away.

"I would love to suspend you," May said, as if she was answering his thoughts. She pulled up on his wrists and ankles a little. "Nothing touching you but what I put there." She let him go and sighed. Then she gave him a reassuring pat on the knee. "This works, though," she said, and clamped something biting onto his left nipple, and another something onto the right. They seemed to be attached by some sort of rod, pulling in to the center, and for a moment all he thought about was the pain.

"Warmup," May announced, and started slapping his bottom and thighs with her open hand. It stung, and jiggled the clips.

If sex was a tightening, a desire to thrust, then this was the opposite; Grant felt boneless, like he was melting into the bed. The slapping went on for awhile, he couldn't have said how long, and then stopped. He vaguely felt May putting some lump of heavy fabric, a folded towel, he thought, over his dick and balls.

"You don't need to count or anything," she said, and then his ass lit up with the stripe of a cane.

If he had been in his right mind, he might have asked whether she always carried a cane in her overnight bag. As it was, he thought of exactly nothing. There was only the feel of it, the shock as she hit him again, the gasp and the fire. It was as if each stroke cut more of his strings, and he was falling into smaller and smaller pieces, unraveling to nothing but scraps and loose ends.

He dimly felt her release his ankles and thighs, felt the relief in his knees as she stretched his legs down flat on the bed. A flare of pain from his unclamped nipples was quickly rubbed away. His wrists came apart and she gave him his fingers back, crossed loosely over his belly. May untied the cloth over his mouth, and over his eyes. As it lifted from his face he realized it was wet with tears. He had no idea when or how long he'd been crying.

He blinked at her, but May just rolled him gently onto his side, then covered him with a blanket. She spooned up behind him, warm through her clothes against his naked back.

"Sleep," she said, into his ear, and Grant slept.

***

He woke once, during the night, and staggered to the toilet. When he came back, May was standing by the bed holding a glass.

"Chamomile, milk, and sugar," she said. "The energy drink of sleeping."

Grant made a face.

"I know you're fine with lactose," she said. She pushed his shoulder, gently, and he sat down on the edge of the bed.

She covered his eyes gently with one hand, and held the glass up to his lips with the other.

"Drink," she said, and Grant drank. It was far too sweet, but the warmth was nice in his stomach.

"Sleep again," she said, and he went back to sleep.

***

When he woke up again, it was early morning. He had rolled over towards May in the night, and she away from him. He looked at the curve of her shoulder. At some point she had stripped down to a camisole, and it was the most of her skin he had ever seen. A mad cascade of images started to rush over him.

_No,_ , he thought. He closed his eyes to put his thoughts in order, and when he opened them, she was awake, and watching him.

"Hold still," she said, and rolled over to her nightstand. She came back with a hairpin, and Ward closed his eyes again while she probed his ear.

"All set," she said, and Ward started to make the plan for their return to the Bus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I kept working on little bits of this, pretty much since posting "Refresher", and more episodes kept happening, and for whatever reason I wanted to keep it canon-compliant so I kept fiddling with it, and adding things, and then "The Well", and my head exploded, the end. If the tone is all over the place, that's why. Also I really wanted to finally get it posted before anything *else* happened (like in episode ten tomorrow night) so... it may be a little unpolished in spots.
> 
> My dimensions for the Bus come from [this Air Force fact sheet](http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/FactSheets/Display/tabid/224/Article/104523/c-17-globemaster-iii.aspx). My ideas for what sort of BDSM equipment May might be able to come up with in a hotel room came from [this tip list for kinksters](http://www.frugaldomme.com/manufact/manufa8.htm#door), including the answer to the mystery of whether she carries a cane in her overnight bag. (She does not.)
> 
> I hope to write at least one more story in this series no matter what happens in canon, or possibly more, if it doesn't get Jossed too badly.


End file.
